BT developing motion control for laptops

by David

The UK’s telecom giant British Telecom, are working on a add on for laptops and tablet PC’s which will enable the user to control the cursor just by moving the laptop from side to side. This revolutionary piece of technology is in the development stages, but is already being tested by engineers who are trying to find situations where this sort of control would be invaluable, this would include engineers, etc.
The concept of controlling the cursor just by moving the computer from side to side is not necessarily a new idea, yet there are not many practical applications out there yet, especially in the computer sector.

The system is at the moment called balance, and is connected to the computer via one of the USB ports, but rather looks like a wireless adapter, yet the device that sticks out is actually a motion sensor, which senses the movement of the computer and thus moves the cursor according to the direction that it is tilted in, this is very similar technology to what we have seen in the Nintendo Wii‘s controllers.

This is a very exciting concept, yet there will be only limited applications for this, for instance gaming, elderly, disabled and for workers whose jobs require them to do many things at once or with one hand, it is clear how useful something like this would be, but in a normal working environment this would probably not be seen.

It will be worth keeping an eye on this technology, because other companies will have different ideas and may be the first to come up with the killer application.